MISCELLANEOUS FACILITIES

Growth of Sacramento requires at least one complete new firehouse and its firefighting equipment each year. This requires at least 12 new firefighters to man the new house and the costs of this increased service pyramid rapidly. New Library facilities require the expenditure of at least $100,000 per year and again the new buildings must be equipped and manned.

PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION

Sacramento City voted $1,500,000 in bonds and bought the local bus transportation system. The alternative was a loss of the operation to Sacramento. This again costs money, for to keep the bus system operational and effective there must be subsidy from city tax funds. Last year the subsidy was $130,000. Next year it will probably be more.

PLANNING CITY FACILITIES

While it is true that all planning is not concerned with public works activity a large part of it is. Sacramento has been spending large amounts of money to secure the best plans possible for its future. Four nationally known consultants have been engaged in this work during the past few years. We have had a comprehensive traffic study and report. We have had a "core area" study and report to assist in planning our downtown area. We have two consultants presently engaged in planning downtown facilities. We know that the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent for studies is only the beginning. The financing of the projects, new streets, new city buildings, new facilities of all kinds will cost in the tens of millions.

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. Mayor, I want to congratulate you on your statement here today on behalf of the legislation that this committee is considering.

Your statement is well founded, and it will be received into the record, and I am sure it will assist in further consideration of this legislation when the committee meets in executive session.

Are there any questions on my right?

Mr. BLATNIK. No questions except to again express appreciation to the mayor for speaking on behalf of himself and on behalf of your outstanding American Municipal Association.

We are all familiar with the splendid record of the association and the assistance they have given us in the past in seeking out more information as to what the problems are on the local level.

Thank you very much, Mayor.

Mr. MCKINNEY. You are welcome.

Mr. JOHNSON. Any questions on my left?
Mr. CRAMER. I have just one or two.

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. Cramer.

Mr. CRAMER. What position do you hold, Mayor McKinney, with the American Municipal Association?

Mr. MCKINNEY. Our city is a member of the association, and I was asked to come from the west coast to represent the AMA in this matter. I hold no position.

Mr. CRAMER. I guess you realize, too, along the lines of the other questions that I asked most of which I believe you heard, that at best the $600 million grant program, the total being made up of both loans and grants and, in addition to that, moneys for Federal projects as well, that the amount made available to the local community for grant purposes is going to be rather insignificant, do you not? Mr. MCKINNEY. I understand that.

Of course, in California and specifically in Sacramento we are in the fortunate position where we would not have to make use of any of the $600 million. We are not in the critical unemployment area.

But it strikes me that even if this is a small start it is, at least, a start on trying to help the situation when you pour $600 million into the situation.

Mr. CRAMER. So you are not talking as representing an area that has unemployment or is an ARA area or a depressed area and, therefore, your community would not benefit at all from the $600 million? Mr. MCKINNEY. That is correct, Mr. Cramer.

Mr. CRAMER. And do you really feel that the people, and I am not talking about the public officials, but the people of these local communities want the Federal Government going into as much as 50 or 100 percent in a Federal grant program for all types of local public works?

Do you think the people want that when, in doing so, they are losing control themselves as to what their local community does, and what types of projects it gets into?

Mr. MCKINNEY. I feel that they want the public works projects and we find, for instance, in our cities that we cannot bear the burden ourselves to promote all of these facilities, and I think the people would want the facilities even though they are there with Federal funds involved.

Mr. CRAMER. You mean if they are not willing to pay for them themselves, as evidenced by their failure to vote bond issues or their failure to support budgetary proposals by their elected officials, if they are not willing to do those jobs themselves, out of their own tax money at home, do you think the demand for those projects is great enough that they would be willing for the Federal Government to tax them to do it?

Mr. MCKINNEY. Well

Mr. CRAMER. Who is going to control this thing of local public works in the future? The people in the local area, in the local municipalities, or somebody here in Washington? Do you not think that the people at home want to control their own destinies and decide themselves whether a new firehouse is going to be built or a new city hall or a new golf course or a new swimming pool, and whether or not, if it is going to be built, how it is going to be built? Do you not think they want to control their own destinies?

Mr. MCKINNEY. I think you are right. They do want to control their own destinies but, as I understand it, under this type of legislation the local government would make its own decision as to what public works projects to recommend that the money be considered for.

Mr. SCHERER. Will you yield?

Mr. CRAMER. I yield.

Mr. SCHERER. And do not the people of the local community want their own elected officials to decide these things rather than some bureaucrat here in Washington?

Mr. MCKINNEY. Well, I think they do; yes.

Mr. CRAMER. Well, if

Mr. SCHERER. They do not want the local officials to abdicate their responsibilities, do they?

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Mr. MCKINNEY. No, but I do no understand that the local officials would abdicate

Mr. SCHERER. Well, I come from a large industrial area, and I have had my mayor and my city councilmen and urban redevelopment director for the city come to me regularly here and complain bitterly that they have lost control over the direction of these programs.

They complain that they have to submit to the redtape and domination of men here in Washington, who are civil service employees not elected by the people of the community, to determine basic issues. That naturally, follows whenever you have the use of Federal moneys involved. That Federal control eventually follows and Federal domination.

Mr. BLATNIK. There is nothing in the bill that compels municipalities to patricipate in the program and, first of all, they, and they alone, initiate it.

It must be done through the form of a resolution of the city council, and the work will be carried out under the direct supervision of the city or village engineer. So I do not see why you said that about Federal control.

Mr. SCHERER. What I have said has followed every Federal program that I know of.

Mr. CRAMER. In addition to that, the assumption is that if the local community comes to Uncle Sam for money, the assumption is that it is either not able to, or unwilling to, put up its own money, and it is very often the former, that they are unwilling to sperd their own

tax money.

I cannot believe that the people are willing to spend Federal money when they are not going to spend the local money which comes out of the same total, gross national product, in the long run.

If they do not want something done on the local level by their support of their own officials of their own program, who is to assume that they would be willing for the Federal Government to do it even though they have evidence they are unwilling to support it? That is what I am talking about, in addition to what the gentleman said.

Mr. SCHERER. Well, in addition to that, we know that many communities and local public officials do not want to assume the political responsibility of raising taxes.

Mr. CRAMER. That is right.

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. Mayor, I would like to ask you one question. I presume that you are here because we are facing a very serious unemployment situation in the United States. We are just about holding our own, and the upturn has not been what it was expected to be, and we are asking for this legislation, and you are here supporting it from the standpoint that you do want to assist.

Your city, and other cities throughout the United States, does have projects that can come under the emergency provisions of this bill. They are depressed areas. There are other cities that cannot come into the standby project, the $2 billion, when triggered by this unemployment situation that we face, that would be willing to go along and put what local funds they possibly can into the program, because in many, many cases the engineering has been completed with local funds, and certain local governments have set up what local projects

they want to move forward on under this standby legislation that we are asking for comprising the $2 billion program. Is that not right? Mr. MCKINNEY. Yes; that is correct.

Mr. BALDWIN. Mr. Chairman?

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. Baldwin.

Mr. BALDWIN. Mayor, I would like to ask you a specific question on a public works project on which I attended two or three meetings about a year ago.

What is the status of the proposed bridge over the Sacramento River?

Is it going to be a high-level bridge or a low-level bridge or has it been solved yet?

Mr. MCKINNEY. Has the Federal Government made a decision on that yet?

Mr. BALDWIN. I am just asking what the viewpoint of the city is. Mr. MCKINNEY. Our view is that it should be a high-level bridge and that has been our recommendation on it.

Mr. BALDWIN. Thank you.

Mr. MCKINNEY. But I do not believe that the engineers in the Federal Government have yet told us what

Mr. SCHERER. See, that is what I was talking about.

Mr. CRAMER. It does not make any difference what Sacramento

says.

Mr. JOHNSON. I might say this: I have been following this very closely myself, and we have been in on most of the meetings so far, and they are now making that study and will come in with some recommendations, the city of Sacramento, the county of Sacramento, and the State, as to whether the people are in favor of a high-level bridge, and I am sure the Corps of Engineers will go along and the Bureau of Public Roads.

Mr. SCHERER. Now, if the Bureau of Public Roads does not want to go along, it can veto it, can it not?

Mr. JOHNSON. That is right.

Mr. SCHERER. In spite of what the State of California wants and in spite of what Sacramento wants they can say, "Now, we disagree with you," and they will prevail.

Mr. SCHWENGEL. Mr. Chairman?

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. Schwengel.

Mr. SCHWENGEL. Mayor, I would like to ask a question.

First, I would like to make an alteration here and point out that on page 3 you were talking about the indebtedness, that it has doubled and quadrupled since 1946.

This is necessary because you could not go in debt or you could not launch out on these public works programs during that critical time of the war, and therefore, this is necessary to take into consideration the fact that you could not because you were not wanting to serve the public interest.

So you were merely picking up a backlog and you were not necessarily creating it because of this increase in indebtedness. Is that not true?

Mr. MCKINNEY. Well, we were picking up the backlog because of the delay in being able to progress with public works, yes.

Mr. SCHWENGEL. Yes; and in your ability to do that you were serving the public interest by being able to take advantage of the laws that prevailed, that made it possible for you to do this?

Mr. MCKINNEY. Yes.

Mr. SCHWENGEL. And while you were doing this also you enhanced the entire economy of your community, and you increased the assets of your community substantially. Is that not true?

Mr. MCKINNEY. Yes; it is true.

Mr. SCHWENGEL. And so you have a greater taxable valuation now that has vastly increased in your community.

Is that not true?

Mr. MCKINNEY. Yes; our assessed values have skyrocketed.

Mr. SCHWENGEL. So this is not really too impressive testimony in favor of this bill, as I see it.

Now, I would like to ask you, sir, if it would not serve your interest and the people's interest in California to have the present program, some $6 billion of programs, which have been authorized and the money appropriated for them in many areas, if it would not be to serve your interest better to have those programs stepped up than to have this program passed?

Mr. MCKINNEY. Well, it would certainly help, of course, to have those stepped up, but I do not know whether that would take the place of the proposed legislation that we are talking about here today, which would be a

Mr. SCHWENGEL. Well, it envisions the employment of thousands more than this proposed legislation.

Mr. Meany said at most that this would employ 250,000 on a temporary basis and, in many instances, it held no permanent solutions and would not provide any permanent jobs.

In fact, in most instances it would provide no permanent jobs, and California benefits from immigration and, therefore, it seems to me that you should be greatly interested in stepping up the development of the Interstate Highway System.

It seems to me that you should come before this committee and say that we ought to adopt new policies and new rules on the Interstate System which would envision the building of those roads which are going to be used most, firstly, one leading from Chicago through our State, which envisions a traffic count of 20,000 cars a day throughout Iowa.

And yet we have in this program, within the State of Iowa—we are going to have sections of the road that are going to be created and we will have an estimated traffic of 5,000 maximum per day.

Would it not make more sense to have this highway headed across the United States completed, and that would help not only California but help all of our States economy a lot more than legislation of this type could ever help?

Mr. MCKINNEY. Well, of course, we have supported that interstate highway program 100 percent, but I do not see that that necessarily excludes consideration of the proposed legislation here.

Mr. SCHWENGEL. You would say that this is more important than the earlier development of the Interstate Highway System? Mr. MCKINNEY. That is not what I am saying.